When I was a rookie at The Vancouver Sun in 1984 beginning to cover the Indo-Canadian community, I admired some of the stories Salim Jiwa did on the developing situation of Sikh militants and later the Air India bombing.
It is not surprising then that Jiwa, who works for the Vancouver Province, spends more than two thirds of his new Air India book—Margin of Terror—talking about the early years of the investigation into the unprecedented terrorist plot that saw 331 killed.
But his take on the case in the last decade is seriously flawed, particularly his assessment of the 19-month trial, the Crown witnesses who risked their lives to testify and the stunning verdict that saw the two accused men—Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri—walk free.
Jiwa might well have a different view of the trial and its 115 witnesses if he had actually covered it. After making a brief appearance on opening day in the spring of 2003, Jiwa showed up again on verdict day more than two years later. He missed seeing the witnesses on the stand. He missed seeing some in the public gallery bent on trying to intimidate them.
Still, Jiwa is now proclaiming Malik completely innocent and an unfair target of police scrutiny. Jiwa backs up this theory by saying the only real evidence against Malik was the testimony of his former employee, a woman identified as Ms. D. who Jiwa says was lying about conversations with Malik in which she claimed he confessed.
Jiwa fails to point out other witnesses who gave compelling evidence linking Malik to the plot. There were two men who testified that Malik asked them to take bomb-laden suitcases to the airport. There was evidence of Malik making under-the-table payments of more than $100,000 to the family of Inderjit Singh Reyat, an admitted participant in the plot. And there was testimony from a Nanaimo man who said Malik asked him to change an earlier statement to police implicating Reyat and Parmar.
More evidence linking Malik to the BabbarKhalsa terrorist group behind the plot has come out post-verdict, such as a Babbar membership form with Malik’s signature dated three weeks before the bombing. Jiwa says he doubts the form’s authenticity, though Malik himself has since admitted he signed it.
Jiwa also accepts without question the judge’s criticism of the key witness against Bagri, an FBI informant identified as John who says Bagri confessed to him. While John was eventually paid US$300,000 to testify, his evidence was corroborated by a veteran FBI agent whom Jiwa doesn’t even mention in his book.
And Jiwa wrongly says John “is also eligible to collect a portion of the $1 million reward.” Apparently Jiwa missed our stories in November 2004 that the reward was off the table by then and none of the witnesses would be collecting any of it.
Jiwa also unfairly suggests that newspaper editor Tara Singh Hayer was shot in 1988 and finally executed in 1998 in two unrelated crimes by individuals with personal grudges against his vitriolic writing style. Police have obtained evidence that Hayer—who was to be a witness against Bagri at trial—was killed in a politically motivated attack related to his knowledge of Air India.
Jiwa’s unfounded theories do a disservice to the dedicated police officers, prosecutors and witnesses who gave up so much to get justice for the Air India victims. And they unfairly undermine the journalists who actually covered the trial.
Kim Bolan
Vancouver Sun reporter Author of Loss of Faith: How the Air India
Bombers Got Away With Murder
